In the face of Lion’s Arch being destroyed and a dragon awakening, morale across Tyria is flagging. Yes we have stopped Scarlet, but at a very high cost. Lion’s Arch has been razed and the world is essentially waiting to see if its people decide to rebuild or move on.
As more time passes without the Captain’s council asserting control they risk losing the city. A city is more then its buildings, if they don’t move to rebuild the morale of their people then any hope of rebuilding Lion’s Arch could be lost and it just becomes ruin’s for future adventures to explore and marvel at the stories of the past.
The only Hope for the city’s future is Dragon Bash.
Previously Dragon Bash was held mid june so i recognize that a lot of the things that i write about in this post may just be wishful thinking but here is hoping the devs were thinking along the same paths.
Dragon Bash is the perfect opportunity for the Council to declare to the world as well as the Dragons that while they may be down they are in no way defeated. The festival is all about defiance. To not hold it would be to admit defeat. Even if the festival is rudimentary as bonfires and alcohol in the ruins of the Grand Piazza, it is in the best interest of the Council to throw a party. The fate of the Spirit of the city is at stake as well as the funds to rebuild.
Fundraising
It has long been a tradition to throw parties to raise support and gather resources to accomplish a goal. The Council could do just that, throw a party and ask people to donate raw materials to help the rebuilding effort. Think bringing can goods to a concert to get in for free. These mats could be dropped off(hobotron, nudge nudge devs) and the player would receive a boon whose duration could be extended by the quality and quantity of mats donated. say 1 tier 1 mat gives 1 second, 1 tier 5 mat gives 5 seconds. so dropping off just 100 scraps of silk would net you 500 seconds of the buff, 8min 20 seconds. The numbers could obviously be tweaked some but you get the idea.
Barnraising
It would be even more exciting to see the Dragon Bash incorporate ideas from old fashion barn raisings. The entire community coming together to build something in a relatively short period of time. For example there could be various sites around the city with workstations the correspond to metal, wood and cloth/leather if you have a profession that can refine one of those materials you can use the workstation. Using the workstation would have you channel for a period of time(say 10seconds maybe upwards of 30 seconds). Doing so would be donating your time and skills to progress the completion of that building. The devs set a crazy high number of activations needed on each building with several different progress models so over time you can see the building take shape. With the mega servers this would obviously mean that the buildings would be universal, that way every version of LA was progressing at the same rate.
A fun thing would be for the devs to monitor your home server when you use a workstation. Doing so could net you a personal buff for doing so but they could also have world buffs that are rewarded to the worlds donating the most to the rebuilding of LA. Ideally everyone would get the buff but say there are 3 tiers of strength to it. The server that is donating the absolute most would get the strongest version. then say maybe then next 8 servers get the second tier and everyone gets the base version. The strongest could be called something like Commodore’s Gratitude with the second tier being Captain’s/Council’s Gratitude(8 councilor’s hence 8 recipients) and the base being Gratitude of Lion’s Arch. Especially if there is no way to see where you stand in comparison to the other servers this would really drive up donations as the community vied for the better buffs. Oh and devs if you do please make them significant especially in relation to each other. if they are highly desirable people won’t mind pursuing then, but if the buff is too weak no one will want to bother seeking the stronger versions.
So that’s my prediction and hopes that Dragon Bash will return next month. Doing other wise would be admitting that despite it all that Scarlet won after all, and we just can’t have that now can we?